message f r o m
Greg Schneider
Head of School
His response was brilliant in its pithiness. “Yeah. Good luck with that.” The Administrator’s Dilemma While I don’t want to give the impression that I have some kind of incredible social life these days, I have to admit that I was back at the Music Hall in Portsmouth once again this month to watch another educational documentary. This time it was the academic treadmill embodied in Race to Nowhere. Not unlike Waiting for Superman, the topic of may last missive, this film has been widely discussed by heads of independent schools everywhere. The two films together create interesting bookends to the national educational debate in many ways, as they seem to offer a bifurcated view of our educational conundrum: on the one hand our system is failing our students in delivering quality academic challenge to all; on the other hand the system is over-valuing academic “production” at the expense of childhood happiness. Both films left me feeling simultaneously grateful for the Berwick community but reinvigorated to maintain our vigilance regarding the happiness and growth of our students. At the end of Race to Nowhere, there is a compelling “to do” list offered for each constituent group involved in the schooling of children, in the hopes of offering a more balanced experience. I began nodding my head as I watched the list unfurl for school administrators, in particular. I elbowed my friend and whispered in his ear. “Notice that the list for school administrators is twice as long as it is for everyone else,” I said.
All of this made me think of my most trusted partners at Berwick – those on this campus who dutifully come to work each day with the “Admin” label stamped across their backs. They are the ten men and women who listen to me ramble on every Thursday morning as we try to simultaneously decide how to arrange the seating at Earth Day, contemplate new technologies for distance learning, plan the opening of school professional development, complete the needed hiring, matriculate the needed students, revise our bullying policies, align our honor rolls, finish our safety manuals, tweak the dress code, determine spring break for 2012, plan a party, and start a new faculty book club all in 90 minutes. That was in fact our actual meeting this past week, believe it or not. This month, I’d like to offer a few reflections on this group as a whole at Berwick. Before I do that, however, a few comments about the universal administrator’s dilemma might offer some useful context. The administrator’s dilemma in schools is one that is well known to every educational institution. Whether it is a college, university, public, or private school – the inherent imbroglio created by teachers and administrators seems to exist. School administrators straddle a line between minister, business person, boss, visionary, and friend. Most administrators were teachers and coaches at one point themselves (at Berwick, most of us still are), so they know what it is like to work for a deficient leader. Somewhere along the line of an administrator’s career there was some incident, some 1791 Letter ~ April 2011
person, or some spark that spurred us to try to do something more. In its most noble construct, administrators share a fundamental desire to lead. There is a belief that one can make a difference through more broad institutional change by stepping outside of the boundaries of a classroom. There is a desire to be a teacher of adults as well as a teacher of children. Certainly there are relative financial rewards for administrators, but these are usually accompanied by giving up the treasured academic vacation schedule, and it comes with an increased level of accountability and stress. I have to imagine that faculty at many schools view the administration as something of a necessary evil (i.e. “You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.”). While faculty everywhere often question decisions, in my experience they are often the first to recognize the administrator’s dilemma when they say: “I would never want your job.” I am a regular reader of the Chronicle of Higher Education, as I believe so many educational trends trickle down to independent school through this realm. I rarely encounter an issue that doesn’t document some painful tension between a university faculty and its administration. Some would argue that this is part of a strong faculty member’s role: to challenge and question the fundamental assumptions and practices of the institution. Parents and students have their own personal views of the administrators. We are the problemsolvers and the philosophical defenders. We are the providers of quality control and hopefully of empathy and support for our families. For students, we can